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@thett3
So called "fact checkers" are in fact no such thing. They hold themselves out as being neutral third parties, who don't have a dog in the fight. Yet, the opposite is clearly true.
There's a term for this sort of behaviour. It's called fraud.
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@Double_R
The video speaks for itself, your reimagination of it notwithstanding.
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@FLRW
Copying and pasting a laughable, self-serving description from the link I posted before?
What is your point?
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I think this is a pretext for rationalmadman to fill the void left by his nonexistant sex life.
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@Double_R
"Companies" don't believe anything. Their governing constituents do, often as a result of their own bullshit which is in conflict with their fiduciary duties to their shareholders.
Individuals in corporate leadership at Disney made this series of idiotic decisions. Clearly, those individuals are in no position to be entrusted with such responsibility. I'd be pissed if I was a shareholder.
What Ron DeSantis is doing is exactly what he should be doing. One power center is checking another. It is when government and private companies get along too well that we start to see problems, as evidenced by the defense industrial complex.
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Politifact once again proves it is fake news. Last week, Biden shook hands with air. Astonishingly, the fraudulent "fact checker" that is Politifact alleged that Biden was "gesturing" towards the crowd.
The fraudulent "fact checker" even hired an "expert" in "research science" --- whatever that is --- to purportedly debunk the reality of what was recorded:
According to Politifact's scientific whore "research scientist" Mike Caulfield:
"When we look at something that seems like one of these human moments, we're like, ‘I don't need to know anything. I can see it right there.' It does breed, I think, a false sense of confidence in us."
I will just state the obvious. In case maybe you missed it.
Mike Caulfield is a charlatan and a fraud. He holds himself out as "a research scientist leading the UW Center for an Informed Public's rapid response efforts."
What is a "research scientist"? Apparently it is whatever this fraud says it is. He has neither the educational credentials nor the publication record to support any inference that hs is credible in any respect. What has he done with his life?
In 1997, he got an MA in English from Northern Illinois University. Their requirements are little more than showing up, periodically.
In 1993, he got a BA in English from the purported "Keene State College." Or so he says.
He is less credible than Alex Jones, a bar so low it doesn't even present a tripping hazard.
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@Barney
Technically only one deployment, but it was a case of punishing my unit for doing a good job. We were supposed to be there only 3 months on a high intensity deployment, and that kept getting extended because we were too valuable. With increasing burnout, our casualties sky rocketed, and then the Troop Surge happened so we had to stay even longer.
If I recall correctly, that would have been around 2008-2009. I don't envy that situation. I also didn't realize you and I are about the same age.
With increasing burnout, our casualties sky rocketed, and then the Troop Surge happened so we had to stay even longer.
Years later, I wound up teaching an ex-Army guy who did a couple of tours in Afghanistan while he got his bachelor's degree on the GI Bill. He shared similar experiences. The multiple tours, often back to back, was reckless and irresponsible. It's not like those risks were unknown. They were widely known, and yet proceeded anyway.
Now it seems like there's the opposite problem, along with a general deterioration of military competencies and leadership.
Male on male. There was a fellow soldier who started obsessing with me, and treated my refusal to watch gay porn with him as some kind of challenge. I can't remember all of the escalation, but it reached a peak one night in Iraq when he tried to force himself on me while I was asleep in my cot. Suffice to say, I woke up swinging my fists. For this, he received no punishment.
Reminds me of experiences I had in athletics when I was in high school. Sometimes it's hard to tell the line between "boys will be boys" type egregiousness or the beginnings of something worse.
Do you know what ever became of of him? Is he now a high ranking officer? Seems like today's military would be ok with that.
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@Double_R
political right is with equating It with the BLM riots
The political right does not "equat[e]" January 6th with the BLM riots. The argument is that based on nature of the violence, scale of property damage and consequential human suffering, BLM's 2020 riots were orders of magnitude worse than January 6th. Further, if the standard of what counts as an "insurrection" is low enough to include January 6th, then BLM is even more guilty.
Here's the basic premises:
- BLM was trying to disrupt/dismantle an instrumentality of the state's power, specifically the police. The BLM riots were an "insurrection," as that term is understood by American law.
- Evidence of the BLM riots constituting an insurrection is widely available, comprising among other things the level of violence, wanton property destruction and nature of their targets/objectives, as well as the intended effect of these.
- By any metric, the extent, scale, costs and losses which resulted from BLM's insurrection in 2020 exceeded anything that followed from January 6th.
Here are the counterpoints:
- There is no indication of a coordinated attempt to disrupt/dismantle the state or any instrumentality of the state's power in connection with January 6th's events. There was no single coordinating entity behind January 6th nor any common/identifiable purpose beyond protesting what they believed was a "rigged" election. At most, a bunch of idiots from the midwest amassed in Washington DC, because of their delusion that Trump would have actually won the 2020 election if the votes were counted properly.
- There was very little violence, minimal property damage, no evidence of any common intention to overthrow or disrupt the government. There were a few, specific individuals who clearly intended to disrupt/dismantle the transfer of power from Trump to Biden, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that was a purpose either (a) common or (b) generalizable to all who were present at the time. Rather, the evidence suggests that certain individuals coordinated a "protest" under the pretext of one or more baseless conspiracy theories and then tried to steer that "protest" into becoming something far worse. But it never materialized as intended, even though the stage was clearly set for that to happen.
- By all metrics, the extent, scale, costs and losses which resulted from the the events of January 6th pale in comparison to BLM's 2020 insurrection.
I am well aware of the prevailing "narrative" on what January 6th was. But I'm less concerned about that, and more concerned with what the evidence as it is currently understood actually shows. Nothing in this post should be read to indicate my agreement with any group or political figure's subjective characterization(s) of the events of January 6th or BLM's 2020 insurrection. I am just explaining the argument and premises behind it.
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Very good responses so far.
- How old were you when you enlisted? Deployed to Iraq? How many tours?
- Why did you enlist? Do you regret it? Do you regret leaving?
- What was the sexual assault incident in the military? Male on male? Commanding officer? In what context?
- Now and with the benefit of hindsight, what are your thoughts on American military activities in Iraq?
- Preferred side arm (for actual use, not just based on looks)? (I would go for a P226, just based on functionality).
- Do you read fiction? If so, what? Have you read the Dune series? If so, what did you think about it?
Unrelatedly, had two events in my life not occurred, enlisting right after high school was my plan. After I got my SAT scores, a USMC recruiter hounded me to enlist. He made a compelling pitch. At that point in my life, I was pretty sure career military was something I could be very happy doing. I am old enough now that most of my friends who enlisted at or around the time I graduated from high school have since done their time, some of them multiple tours and then left for civilian life. Some have been able to handle it better than others.
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@bmdrocks21
That's interesting, but her tweets and other communications are public record. No sensible person can dispute what she has done. The fact that certain actors are trying to prevent preservation is evidence of their bad faith, for which they should fact public condemnation.
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@thett3
I agree. From a psychological perspective, I think the reason individuals like Taylor Lorenz engage in this pathological manipulation is because they know, consciously and subconsciously, that what they're doing --- or proposing to do --- is wrong. So, when a representative case of this disgusting behavior is laid bare for the world to judge at face value, she and others like her engage in this performative nonsense for several concurrent purposes:
- To virtue signal;
- To create the false impression of collective consensus, in an audience that is unlikely to hear any alternative; and
- To marginalize, delegitimize and condemn responses that normal people of ordinary common sense would have.
Basically, the same reason Vladimir Putin has fake opinion polls, fake elections and fake rallies.
That woman is a fraud, a liar and a hack. She is a disgrace to the field of "journalism," and frankly had demonstrated no capacity whatsoever for engagement in anything that might resemble a journalistic act.
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Taylor Lorenz engaged in the exact same tactics with respect to Libs of Tik Tok that she "sobbed" about on MSNBC. According to crybully whore Taylor Lorenz, she experienced:
"severe PTSD" following criticism from Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald. [She claims to have] "had to remove every single social tie. I have severe PTSD . . . contemplated suicide and got really bad."She explains that "[[y]ou feel like any little piece of information that gets out on you will be used by the worst people on the Internet to destroy your life and it’s so isolating."
What Lorenz fails to acknowledge is that she is a serial harasser, who wished death on Glenn Greenwald in the context of a homophobic tirade, doxxed him and tried to use her position/access on social media to cause him actual harm to him.
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is his specialty being a whiny little bitch
That behaviour is, as usual, totally uncalled for.
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I don't care, dude. Like at all.
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@TheUnderdog
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@n8nrgmi
What is your point?
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@oromagi
Since you claimed to have anticipated what I said, I read over the rest of your post. And upon doing so, I see you have failed to even acknowledge what I said, much less address it in any sense.
This is disappointing. Refrain from wasting my time like that in the future.
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@oromagi
I stopped reading when you referenced an alleged encyclopedia. I don't care what your alleged encyclopedia says. It occurs to me that you may not have understood what the word "insurrection" meant, and how that word is used colloquially versus what it means by law. Citation to an alleged encyclopedia that, most charitably, references no more than the politically charged colloquial usage of that term is unavailing.
Insurrection is a crime, made punishable as such by American law. In order to be charged with a crime, there has to be evidence to reasonably suggest the possibility you have committed the crime you're charged with. No one has even been charged with insurrection, that participated in the events of January 6th, much less been convicted of any such criminal act.
You have no evidence that any such insurrection occurred, because the prosecutors who have charged those who participated in the events of January 6th didn't even have evidence sufficient to file the charge. Yet, for some reason you want to argue with me about what happened based on some third-party account in an alleged dictionary? That is probably itself based on no more than citation to vapid reporting that misused the term in the first instance? That failed, by some astonishing lack of diligence, to even uncover the consequential criminal charges?
I understand you may not have been in a position to consider these facts beforehand. But perhaps upon such reflection, you will reevaluate the position you have advocated for.
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@n8nrgmi
You seem to have misunderstood what I said. Try re-reading it, and then if you have a question propose it in response.
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See the third sentence of my post, above.
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@thett3
It's become impossible to distinguish the government from private interests.
Biden's administration has pushed all social media companies to censor anything that contradicts the current Democrat narratives. And they have.
So called "fact checkers," who are in fact no such thing, are bought and paid for by leftist interests to fraudulently hold themselves out as independent third parties. Which they are not. Rather, they are the cat's paws of Democrat interests funded by, among others, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Glaxo-Wellcome Trust and other such interests, at the behest of the same interests who own and control the current administration.
I can only hope Elon Musk accomplishes his hostile takeover and fires everyone at Twitter, which is a den of Ellen Pao-type vipers.
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What a preposterous thread. Everyone from Russia I know viscerally opposes Putin's idiotic war in Ukraine, and is afraid to state as much because they risk incarceration if they do so under Putin's new laws. Blaming the Russian people for Putin's idiotic war is like blaming all Americans for Dick Cheney's push to invade Iraq.
Russians are afraid of a return to the old ways of the USSR, when having the wrong political opinion can get you sent to a labor camp for ten years or worse.
Russians are tired of their sons, most of whom are no more than eighteen or nineteen, being conscripted into the Russian army to be sent home from Ukraine in body bags. The videos of barely-trained Russian kids (teenage and 20-something boys, mostly) being captured by the Ukrainian army as POWs are hard to watch. These aren't Roman Abramovich's sons, either. They're the sons of Russia's poorest families, often from the provinces, who had no other option.
Russians are exhausted with the stupidity of American-led sanctions, because they all know there is no world where those sanctions change anything, even if the ruble's value was destroyed (which it has not). Instead, American rivals are just buying and selling oil from Russia in rubles, jeopardizing the petrodollar and the American dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. No American president has acted more incompetently. Not even Jimmy Carter. The purpose of American sanctions is to destabilize Putin's regime, which has never worked and will never work. The only time that strategy even came close was when Obama concurrently flooded the market with cheap Saudi oil. Yet, oil prices are at record highs --- to Russia's considerable benefit --- due in no small part to the astonishing idiocy and incompetence of Joe Biden, the State Department and every alleged "expert" involved in formulating that strategy. On top of that, Biden acutely reduced anticipated global oil supply through numerously idiotic "green new deal" type "environmental measures," including thwarting the Keystone Pipeline. Each of these measures were a gift to Putin's government, because they collectively drove oil prices through the roof.
All the while, Biden has managed to accomplish nothing other than further consolidate Putin's power, push Western "allies" closer to Moscow (like India) and facilitate greater cooperation between NATO rivals (like Beijing and Moscow).
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@TheMorningsStar
Your perspective is interesting. Not one I would have expected from a teenager or younger adolescent. I wanted to confirm my impression was correct. And it was.
Your experience reminds me of someone I once knew. He and I were both involved in a common activity, so many years ago. I think he's about your age, maybe four years younger than me. Maybe five. I don't know. Hard to recall.
He was a cute kid, friendly and endearing. Or at least he was endearing, to me. Sandy blonde hair and taller than most of his peers. He played sports and was fairly athletic, as was I when I was his age. But among that crowd he was an outsider, as was I also. He came from a fairly conservative, religious family that almost certainly could not contend with the fact that he was (probably) gay. I doubt he had any clue I was gay, then or at any time after.
Once I moved away and he left for college, we lost touch. I later learned that he came out as trans, a few years after. He dropped out of college, had an Instagram which seemed to focus on personal art/graphics projects and some of what looked like sissy-type fetish wear. He also appeared to have other interests, including a few that I shared, from another social media account he has since deleted. Beyond that, it appeared he lived and presented as female for a period of time; makeup, clothing, hair and the rest. I understand all of that was very hard on him.
After living for a period of time in another state, he eventually moved back home. I don't know whether he and his family ever came to terms.
I'd known him since he was about 15. I wonder if his life might have turned out differently, if I'd said some of the things I thought he needed to hear but which I didn't believe were my place to say. I wonder whether he would have dated the girl or came out as trans in college. I wonder whether he'd have just had a boyfriend, perhaps gone through some counseling and came to terms with some of the sexual interests which appear to have contributed to the choices he made.
I tried to reach out to him a few times. But I am pretty sure he thinks I'm something other than what I am. The fact is that it's just the opposite.
Being trans is something that's a lot more real than the activists who purport to advocate on their behalf seem to realize. And it isn't just the kind of thing you wake up and realize, though as adolescents (especially boys) start to enter puberty their interests may lead them to think they're trans when, in fact, they are no such thing. They're just kinky. Over time, those appetites can grow into something unhealthy. That's what I've always thought with him, especially based on his social media. Sometimes therapy can help, but often just talking about it candidly with someone who isn't going to judge you is enough. I am almost certain he didn't have that.
I wish I'd been able to reconnect with him.
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The Democrats have made it their constant project since the COVID-19 "pandemic" to frustrate every aspect of our lives, impede our liberty and menace our very being. This, they have accomplished through means previously unimaginable in this country. They have made life neither easier nor affordable. In fact, they have accomplished just the opposite. They govern as fascists govern, over subjects who can barely be recognized as citizens and whose freedom now appears subject to the unilateral, arbitrary and capricious exercise of technocratic power by so-called "experts" within the field of "public health." A once free country now remains subject to all possible peril of an imperious federal government, that categorizes people as domestic terrorists for merely expressing objection to the subject matter of their children's instruction.
The Republicans, make no mistake, are not without faults. In criticizing them, I am left only with the question of where to begin amid an encyclopedic array of available subject matter. Yet, they have at least had the decency to oppose, for the most part, the draconian, hygienic fascism and mitigated, to the limited extent possible, some of the harm Democrats are solely responsible for causing. How much better to be subject to the whims of a self-interested despot, than the product of a bureaucrat who in his state of delusion claims to act in the self interest of free people.
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@TheMorningsStar
How old are you?
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The size and scope of government is the largest problem with which we are confronted. That problem manifests at numerous different levels. The most egregious of the levels at which that problem manifests is by ceding essential liberty to technocrats, bureaucrats and so called "experts." There is no upper limit to the harm such technocratic, bureaucratic or other expertise-based alienations of liberty may cause.
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@TheMorningsStar
Wait. Are you trans?
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@badger
Freddy Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS. The "cure" probably killed him.
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@Greyparrot
Oh, yeah well that was obviously how I'm sure Tim Pool meant it. I'm surprised you like him, btw. Actually not really. I like him, and you and I are politically pretty close to one another.
Tim Pool is a lot closer to the center than I am, though. He's also a lot more willing to entertain leftist bullshit than I am, though. I used to be as far to the libertarian left as you could go without being an outright anarchist. Now, I'm about as far to the libertarian right as you can go without being Ayn Rand.
I remember the first time I read Atlas Shrugged, when I was about 13. I was so bored with it. I thought it was stupidly long, tediously written and sexually bizzare. Now, as an adult in Joe Biden's America, I read Atlas Shrugged as a lighthouse beautifully shining through a raging storm of governmental creation, warning against the dangers of a jagged, rocky shores into which our crash seems fated.
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@thett3
You are correct.
There is a big difference between gay rights as such and the current "trans-related" issues, such as gender affirming care. On the one hand, gay rights were about treating people equally under the law and in society, without regard to their sexual orientation. On the other hand, "trans-related" issues are about treating people differently under the law and in society, based solely on their purported "gender expression."
Another difference relates to at what level the harm at issue is manifested. Those who opposed gay marriage did so based on an abstract harm to their conception of the "institution of marriage" as such. Those who oppose so called "gender affirming care" do so based on their cognizance, often first hand observance, of the concrete harm associated with giving Depo Provera to twelve year old boys and cutting off the breasts of eleven year old girls.
People have such short memories, which is why history repeats itself time and time again.
- Then, and within living memory, actual castration (i.e., surgically performed orchiectomy) was similarly regarded as "therapeutic" for "treatment" of the "condition" then known as "homosexulity." That practice began around the late 19th century at the dawn of the so called field of psychiatry and continued well into the late 1980s and even beyond the time that "homosexuality" was removed from the DSM-IV.
- Now, and at present, both chemical castration and surgically performed sexual mutilation are regarded as "therapeutic" for "treatment" of the "condition" now known as "gender dysphoria." The practice began around the late 1980s, although has been practiced for longer in countries like Iran. Just today, the Washington Post published an op-ed of a survivor of such "therapy," who laments his (not her) life devoid of sexual experience, because he was "transitioned" before he was old enough to appreciate what that meant.
Every lie we tell ourselves as a society incurs a debt to the truth that will, in the end, be collected. The current balance on that account is denial of what has been true --- at least according to evolutionary theory --- about almost all living things since before life emerged to land: the difference between male and female. It is ingrained in every aspect of our being.
We will pay for this, as a society.
May God have mercy on us. And I mean that seriously. We are lost as a people.
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While unrelated to the topic at hand, I continue to be amazed by how much confusion there is over the word "insurrection."
- If mere "violence" engaged in against a government by a crowd is enough to constitute an insurrection, then the BLM riots across the country and wanton destruction of monuments throughout our fruited plains falls into the same category.
- If the standard is measured by how many cops were "injured" (a curiously vague term), then every single BLM riot was an insurrection and they should be prosecuted accordingly.
Except, those aren't the criteria and that is readily understood by all thinking people. Yet, a cohort of individuals seeks to redefine that word to make January 6th an insurrection while at the same time defining the BLM riots as being outside of it. In the best case, it's partisan hackery. In the worst case, people can't make sense of the world as it is.
A part of me thinks it's just about power, where who has the power depends in part on who controls the narrative. In that case, the narrative is that the midwestern LARP-ers who descended on Washington and were invited into the White House (as the video evidence amply reflects) are always and unquestionably domestic terrorists and BLM are no such thing.
Or at least that's how the cards fall, today. But tomorrow? The world in which all left wing protesters were placed into the same bucket as communists and other enemies of the state is still in living memory. This will come back around at the Democrats' expense when power changes hands, which is the obvious risk of why playing these sort of idiotic games is irrational.
What goes around, comes around and comes back around again.
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@oromagi
INSURRECTION specifically means 'violent uprising against government'
So you say. The January 6th committee would like to disagree.
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So called "gender affirming care" is a conversion therapy more egregious than that practiced by "psychiatrists" before homosexuality was removed from the DSM-IV.
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Consider every reform "progressives" have made, with respect to all matters form the 20th century forward.
On average, the reforms have made things more worse than better.
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@Vader
Why do you think a website's purported Code of Conduct prohibits reporting criminal activity to law enforcement?
For example, if User X learned that User Y on this website was exchanging illegal revenge pornography with other users on the site in violation of British law, and User Y lives in the United Kingdom, is User X prohibited by this site's purported Code of Conduct from reporting the same to British law enforcement?
I'm just going to tell you that there is a correct answer to this question. I just want to see if we can work through this together.
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Modern Monetary Theory is to economics what being woke is to philosophy.
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I will also state, as a matter of record:
- Whiteflame obviously is not a fascist of any kind (the accusation is preposterous);
- Supa is not a fraud of any kind, conservative or otherwise, and I have found his political views to be reasonable in the past, particularly as they relate to a certain mayor and a certain governor (and I share those views); and
- Ragnar is not a "free speech quasher," whatever that is, if it can even be defined (which I question).
Each of these folks have been rational in the past and none of them have demonstrated any propensity to act arbitrarily. So I am sure that some understanding here can be reasonably reached.
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@Barney
@Vader
@whiteflame
@ILikePie5
I don't see the utility in personal attacks against the moderators. I am sure Supa, Ragnar and Whiteflame intended to accomplish a result that was reasonable and fair. The personal attacks distract from the issues at hand and cause all parties to become more entrenched in their positions, for personal reasons, rather than work cooperatively to come up with some kind of solution. Those personal attacks are also against your own interests, for the same reason. If the goal is to get these individuals to change their mind, these accusations aren't moving the ball forward:
Whiteflame is a fascist.SupaDudz is a fraud conservative and a neoconRagnar is a free speech quasher
Now, where I stand on these issues is a matter of record. While I'm sure there is room for reasonable disagreement, the decision reflected in the moderation log is one I find regretful, including for reasons I have previously stated. I would invite all participants in that decision to engage in a dialogue, potentially because the language used may not have reflected the actual reasons why Wylted's latest incarnation was banned. Perhaps, after a more thoughtful consideration of the issues in play a resolution of these matters can be reached on terms that are at least understood as fair by all of us --- which is currently not the case.
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It is entertaining to me that you have chosen to block me, as you now have to undertake greater effort to determine whether I've replied to you or not.
But my terms have not changed. You will conform your behaviour to the standard of a reasonable adult or we will not discuss any ideas you may have, the sum of which I have not read.
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@ILikePie5
I don't want to speculate in a public context because that would be inappropriate. I am happy to engage with Rational Madman, but that will take place on acceptable terms. There is no need to exchange for this unidirectional hostility.
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@RationalMadman
I said nothing about your character. But I said all that needs to be said about your behaviour.
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@RationalMadman
Why do you feel like it is acceptable to speak to other people like that?
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@RationalMadman
I am civilised, it's why I insult instead of beating somebody's brains out,
I stopped reading at that point. I don't even know what you're talking about.
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